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A court ruling rejecting Federal Election Commission disclosure requirements as too lax has left political players unsure how much they need to report about the financing of issue ads, making the agency a battleground in the dispute over secret money in 2012.

The March 30 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson orders the FEC to rewrite disclosure rules drafted after enactment of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that the court deemed inadequate.

Few expect the six-member agency to comply promptly with the order. Divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, the FEC is notorious for partisan deadlocks. It hasn’t yet mustered a quorum to weigh new regulations arising from the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, though it did say it would no longer enforce restrictions that kept labor unions and corporations from making political expenditures.

“They’re very tardy in doing this, frankly,” said Indiana election lawyer James Bopp Jr., who petitioned the FEC to write new regulations within weeks of the Citizens United ruling. “There are several regulations that depend exclusively on the sections of the law that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down, and the only responsible course for the FEC would have been to repeal those regulations.”

The March 30 ruling muddies the waters further. At issue is whether trade associations or tax-exempt advocacy groups must report the donors behind the issue ads known as electioneering communications. Such ads picture or name a candidate on the eve of an election but stop short of urging for a vote for or against the individual. Nonprofits spent some $133 million on the ads in 2010 without disclosing donors.

The McCain-Feingold law, officially the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, included broad disclosure rules for the ads. But FEC regulations written in the wake of its passage only require identifying contributions specifically earmarked for such ads. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) challenged the rules in court, arguing they were too narrow and left loopholes.

Jackson agreed, concluding that “Congress spoke plainly” and “did not delegate authority to the FEC to narrow the disclosure requirement through agency rulemaking.” Van Hollen and his allies say the decision is only part of what may evolve into a multifront war over agency rules.

“This is a very clear instruction from the court,” Van Hollen said in an interview. “The opinion was crystal clear, and pointed the FEC in the direction demanded by the law. So I think the FEC is going to be playing with fire if they try and thumb their noses at the court.”

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March 13, 2015

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., right, hugs Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, after the Congressman spoke at the IAFF's Legislative Conference General Session at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill, March 9, 2015. The day featured addresses by members of Congress and Vice President Joe Biden.